Your skin is burning (at the sight of me)
by ibuzoo
Summary: He stops for a moment and looks her once over, then shrugs, says, „You look like a butcher." She thinks she looks like Ashtar, babylonian goddess of war and blood. Maybe that's exactly what he means.


**Your skin is burning (at the sight of me)**

**Prompt: **Blood

**Rating: **M

**Warnings/Tags: **Blood / Murder / Explicit Murder and Blood Description / Alternate Universe / Killer AU / the Death Eaters are a bunch of Serialkillers and Tom is their leader / Hermione joins them and starts to have an obsession with blood

**Word count:** 1725

**Summary: **He stops for a moment and looks her once over, then shrugs, says, „You look like a butcher."

She thinks she looks like Ashtar, babylonian goddess of war and blood.

Maybe that's exactly what he means.

**A/N: **The most important part in this, is Hermione's POV and the way she tries to find herself, set in Modern Times.

**Disclaimer: **This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros. Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

* * *

**o.**

_She recognizes herself. _

_Finally._

_Someone's blood drips off the tip of her nose._

**i.**

They don't give her a knife at first, because they're not sure she has the strength to make knives count. They give her a bat, a gun but both are too bold for her slender fingers, both too audacious for her liking. They give her a wire to twist around her enemy's neck, thin and dangerous, but this doesn't suffice. She soaks the strands in ricin to watch the venom slip deep in the neck of her victim - just like the bite of a Phoneutria and twice as poisonous.

The first time she tries it, she's transfixed by the spurt of blood, the colour of a man's throat on the palms of her hands, her arms and face, and she pulls with a maniac flash in deep chocolate eyes.

_(she always pulls too hard)_

In the end, she finds she likes knives the best. There is something brutally poignant about the whistle of soaring metal and the thud of a honed point into flesh and bone. Back before Tom found her, scurrying through the muck of a city with too much money in too few people's hands, she'd felt lost and waiting for something more, for someone to pull her out.

She sleeps with a knife in her hand at all times.

She's made a pact with the devil, with the cold of fresh steel, with desperation.

_(she puts ricin on the knife too)_

**ii.**

The others start to talk about her in the corridors, the girl he brought, the lover, the child who once dug her nails into a man's eyes and ripped his eyeballs right out.

The girl with nothing to lose.

**iii.**

She stares at the mirror, panic written clearly in her eyes, her face, the girl's mouth wide as she tries to breath, breath, you're not dying, it's not your blood, it's not your blood. There are scratches on her arms, her neck and the pictures from moments ago still flashed vividly before her eyes and there's no turning back, not anymore.

_(stop crying)_

Rabastan leans in the doorframe, tall and dark and slender and there's a gleam of amusement in his face, perhaps even respect and she whispers, swallows the upcoming tears, asks what she looks like.

Her heart pounds violently against her chest, almost painful and there are seconds of silence that feel like whole minutes until Rabastan finally answers, „You look like a predator."

When she raises her eyes to the mirror again, she thinks she looks more like the prey, barely escaped from a poacher, driplets of blood still clinging in the coat.

Maybe that's what Rabastan means.

**iv.**

A passing-through salesman approaches her, eyes the ambiance around her, his fingers almost touching before she says, really snaps, „Keep your paws to yourself."

The man laughs but before another words is spoken her knife already made the move, slaughters the mans face and neck and there's nothing he can do, her boot kicking in his kneecaps, her body in fluid motions right behind him and there's a tug, a slash and warm blood is spilling over her hands again.

The moment his body goes slack she closes her eyes and savours the moment.

**v.**

Later she stands in the bathroom, her brown curls hang lose and wet besides her face, Bellatrix right behind her, hands and fingers on her shoulders and wow, she's beautiful, all black curls and full red lips. She looks in the mirror again, the blood still on her arms and neck and she asks what she looks like, sees the smile in Bella's features, a cruel one, a proud one.

(no blood on her face this time)

„Like a child, my dear."

She thinks she looks like a demon freshly born out of Lucifer's womb.

Maybe that's what Bellatrix means.

**vi.**

It's a week later and she can't move, a bullet pinning her with fire, a cold wall of an abandonned back alley pushing hard into her back and the cold twists around her, tries to grab her with spideresque fingers and a soft melody to lull her to sleep.

There's movement out of the corner and the moment she spots dark hair and a handsome face she lets out a breath.

_(he kisses her right there, suffocating and bruising, digging the bullet out of her body with her knife)_

**vii.**

He kisses her again, half a week later, she rubs at the bandage, and tries to hide the pain that still stirs in her eyes. She kisses back and her mind tells her that this is what she signed up for, this is where she belongs, entirely, always.

He bites her when she smiles.

**viii.**

Knives and weapons draw blood but she's been bitten and shot and cut a dozen different times.

That's the beauty of being immune - all those wounds don't do much.

**ix.**

She returns after her mission, enters the kitchen through the back door, in the dark after everyone's left, the night long fallen and almost all of them following his orders. Only Avery sits on the table, drinks coffee and flashs her a smile, and she asks him what she looks like, right there without the lights on, just stars and moonlight illuminating the room.

He stops for a moment and looks her once over, then shrugs, says, „You look like a butcher."

She thinks she looks like Ashtar, babylonian goddess of war and blood.

Maybe that's what Avery means.

**x.**

Hours later when dawn nearly breaks they lie on Tom's bed, her hair wild and legs open, his arm around her waist, hand on her hip pressing deep in the flesh, leaving marks and they look ravished, barbarian, fatal, and Tom shoves his face against her throat, up under her jaw where he's discovered it tickles, sucks on her skin, bites with his teeth. She knees him in the ribs though, reflex, and he groans while she moans and laughs and laughs.

**xi.**

Greyback is in the bath, coverd in pulled of slashes of blood and rags that have been clothes, and he says her name, says again, „Give me a hand?"

She doesn't answer, tries to clean away the red to see if it's pouring from his body and she feels the way he watches her from under his eyebrows, with eyes too dark and dangerous but she doesn't fear, not him and it's two in the morning in the soft yellow from the light hanging from the ceiling while she's getting red smears on her favorite sleeping shirt from his hands that try to hold on her.

Greyback says her name and the blood is rolling down her arms, greases on her front where she pushed her hair away and she glances down at him, sees how his eyes are going glassy and she has to hold him up to finish cleaning his wounds so he doesn't look like something from the morgue.

„Go sleep in your room, Tom will be home soon and you can report tomorrow morning," it's an order, her voice sharp and she helps him up until he's steady on his feet again. When she turns away to clean the rags and the room his voice is barely audible but she hears it still: „You look like a Queen."

She turns around to have a look at the mirror and she thinks, no, i'm not a queen, i'm barely Countess Bathory, enjoying the blood moistening my flesh and bones.

Maybe that's what Greyback means.

**xii.**

In France she snaps a man's neck with the ease born of a lifetime's experience. It happens quickly, silent, the man's body slumping haphazardly to the ground and she's still breathing hard when she bows down to pick up her knife again after the man disarmed her.

Abraxas is just rounding the corner, gun in his hand, ready and fast, his entire being is strained forward with concentration and he stops in his tracks the moment he sees her turning around, a cold look in her eyes, saying without any emotion, „You're late."

**xiii.**

At night, she stares at the mirror in the hotelroom they're sharing, bruises on her cheekbones and arms, love bites from Tom on her throat and thighs where the meaning is literal, little blood splatters that paint her skin in different shades of red and pink. She feels Abraxas' eyes even if she can't see him behind her so she asks, calm, what she looks like.

He doesn't miss a beat like the others, his answer fast and rapid as a machine gun, „You. You look like you."

She thinks she looks like Persephone, bathing in pomegranates and the juice of Hades' adversaries.

Maybe that's what Abraxas means.

**xiv.**

„Forever?", she asks and turns her head to tug it under Tom's chin, his hand heavy possessive around her frame and there's a movement from his shoulder, a deep breath and she can hear his heart beating strong and steady.

_(tha-thump, tha-thump)_

She wonders if it tears him to say it but she's mistaken, his fingers still bruising patterns on her skin and it feels right, it feels whole, „Do you think you can handle it?"

She grins and puts a kiss on his collarbone, a bite, a bruise and she watches his skin turning red from scratching teeth and sucking lips, and she says, almost whispers, eyes shining bright, „I think i can, i'm a big girl."

In the end if they should ever die, at least they will die together.

_(nothing says forever like a headstone with two names on it)_

xv.

She stares at the mirror, the girl on the other side with wide eyes, bright brown and a dangerous glint behind chocolate walls, her curls streaked with blood and rainwater, her skin pale in the dim light and the blood covers parts of her face and fingers like honey, thick and warm.

Tom stands right behind her, hands on her sight and their eyes are alike, the same glint, the same blood dripping from both of their bodies and she licks inside her blood-smeared mouth, asks again what she looks like.

„Mine. You look like you're mine."

She recognizes herself.

Finally.

_(someone's blood drips off the tip of her nose)_


End file.
